Last Thursday, I made the trip up to Shoreditch to head to Cargo for the POBPAH gig. For once, I got there nice and early so managed to catch both support acts as well as the main band themselves.

The venue itself was a pretty cool little place that confused me to start with as there didn’t seem to actually be anywhere for the bands to play. After realising that the stage itself was behind a curtain, I headed through to the gig area and was pleasantly surprised to find a nice small venue and a stage I could just walk right up to.

I managed to arrive bang on time for the first band’s set. First up was Tender Trap, who I’d never heard of. Visually, they were a little bit unusual; not in ‘Camden unusual’ but in that the band seemed to be half made up of people in their 40s and half in their 20s. Anyhoo, they actually had a pretty decent sound and were rather enjoyable for an opening band. The guitars were a bit repetitive just playing chords in 4/4 with a standard pumping bassline in almost every song, but the vocals, which were really rather good, managed to just about save them.

I’ve since been told that half the band had recently changed so that makes their set even more impressive. Maybe not something I’d go out and buy, but they were good enough. Highlight was easily their song that went down the more ‘punk rock’ route than the rest.

The second support band I had heard of as their name rang a bell but I wasn’t familiar with their music and Shrag ended up being a real surprise for me.

Being in some weird place between the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Los Campesinos and another-band-I-thought-of-but-can’t-remember, they had a really good sound with great guitar riffs and basslines and some in-your-face vocals. They flitted between more poppy numbers and punky ones and it made for a really good set. The singer was really engaging as well, jumping about all over the place and going between synth and vocal duties. Great set.

Got one of their tracks recorded but have absolutely no idea what it is!

And so after the starters came the main course of POBPAH who came out and launched straight into their set, kicking off with ‘This Love Is Fucking Right’.

From there on, they never really stopped apart from to tune back up and then would launch straight into another track, playing the majority of the their album (although not Contender from what I remember..) The sound from the band was pretty good, although the levels for the vocals were terrible for a good 20 minutes so they were barely audible, even right at the front of the stage. But the band were really tight and looked so nonchalant playing each song.

With the band launching from one song to the next, there was very little time for any crowd interaction, which was a shame, but the crowd of around 100-150 were loving the set itself, jumping around for the majority of it.. even if the music didn’t quite match the enthusiasm of the crowd.

As much as I like the album, at times it feels like it can drag and get a bit samey. The live performance didn’t have quite as much of this problem but sometimes I couldn’t quite figure out which track they were playing (especially when they had the problems with the vocals).

After their ‘set’ finished they did the obligatory walk off and come straight back on for a brief encore (I really hate it when bands do that.. just play the set!!) which ended the night well.

As a whole, the night was a pretty good one with all the bands being pretty good. The Pains didn’t disappoint with their set and had a real good energy while they played. The most surprising thing was that they played for so long but it never felt like it as it was so relentless. Good stuff!